The power of knowing oneself: Introducing a module on self-awareness, the first step of emotional intelligence among medical students

The word “emotion” is derived from the Latin verb “Emovere,” which means to stir or shake. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and effectively use one’s own emotions and those of others. The five key components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills.[1] Self-awareness is defined as a state in which one understands one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Medical professionals frequently operate in complex physical and psychological environments. Therefore, self-awareness is essential for influencing one’s own emotions in clinical judgments and interactions with colleagues and patients. Physicians with good self-awareness experience greater fulfillment in their work and enhanced self-care and well-being. Health professionals with low self-awareness tend to have self-destructive patterns of overwork, increased stress, compassion-fatigue, and burnout.[2] The development of self-awareness is essential in today’s medical environment. In recent years, doctors face a growing burden of paperwork, updating electronic health records, leading to decreased time for patient interaction. All of these contribute to decreasing professional satisfaction and burnout.[3] Medical students face a lot of emotional, moral, and ethical distress on encountering the sufferings and death of patients during their clinical postings. Moreover, the heavy demands of the academic curriculum affect their mental and general well-being. Hence, there is a pressing need for a self-care education in the curriculum augmented with psycho-emotional support to the medical students.[4] Given these multiple issues, we felt the dire need to train our medical students on emotional intelligence. Hence, we developed a teaching module on self-awareness, which is the first component of emotional intelligence. The module was conducted in three sessions of 2 h each. As we are dealing with awareness of our emotions, in the first session, the students were exposed to the concepts of different types of emotions like anger, sadness, happiness, fear, surprise, and disgust. This was done through various art forms such as dance, drawing the emoticons on the board, playing Instagram reels, and asking them to identify these emotions. This was followed by an interactive session on the concept of Emotional Intelligence, its components, and the difference between the Intelligence quotient and Emotional quotient. Finally, the RULER approach (Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating the emotions) to manage the emotions were explained. In the second session, the students were given three different scenarios and asked to enact a role play on different forms of self-awareness and to highlight the consequences. The first role play depicted an individual who lacked self-awareness, which eventually led to conflicts and poor decision-making. The second role play depicted a self-aware individual refusing to seek help, which led to stress and stagnation. The third scenario was about a fully self-aware individual who was willing to seek help that led to growth, better relationships, and positive outcomes. In the final session, the different types and methods of improving self-awareness, like journaling, Mood meter, and the Johari window technique, were dealt with. Mood meter is a tool developed at the Yale Center which helps people to understand and recognize their emotions in a simple visual way. Mood meter is divided into four quadrants based on two dimensions.[5] The Johari window is a psychological tool that illustrates self-awareness and understanding the relationships by dividing knowledge about oneself into four quadrants (Open, hidden, blind, and unknown).[6] One week after completing the module, the students were asked to reflect on the lessons learnt and how they wish to incorporate this in their day-to-day lives. The responses obtained were qualitatively analyzed. The qualitative analysis of the reflective writing from the students revealed that they could figure out what triggered their emotions and who (person) or what (event) makes them react strongly or leads to their present mood. “I am calm and relaxed and in a good mood as I had a very good sleep and resolved my misunderstanding with my close friend,” exclaimed a student. Hence, we perceive that the students were able to identify their strengths and weaknesses. They were able to reflect on their personal habits, like being consistent in reading every day, which helped them to understand the concepts better and could ward off stress during exams. Another student mentioned that “Even though I sleep well, I am not able to concentrate on my studies, and I feel exhausted. But if I spend some time going to the gym, playing guitar and keyboard, I feel energetic and can do my work quickly and happily.” Most of the students expressed that the concept of “Mood meter” helped them to recognize and label their emotions accurately. This helped them to identify strategies for managing them effectively. Many felt that the Mood meter opened up opportunities for them to talk about their feelings, reflect on their emotional triggers and were able to express their state of mind clearly to their peers. Similarly, a considerable number of students documented that they were actively engaged in self-reflection, mentioning how the previous experiences influenced their personal development. This suggested that self-awareness promoted a growth-mindset and emotional maturity among the students. A few students felt that “emotions” influenced their decision-making. They felt that when they were aware of their emotional state, they could take steps to revert to a more focused and calm state of mind, which enhanced their learning capacity. Some students expressed concern about how their emotions were misunderstood by their peers, like when they were nervous, it was interpreted as not being interested and appearing aloof. Siraj et al. and Castro et al. suggested that self-awareness is essential for personal and professional growth. Medical professionals can improve their decision-making skills, communication and empathy, leading to better patient outcomes and preventing burnout among the professionals.[7,8] Similarly, other studies have investigated ways to improve self-awareness. Notably, Benbassat and Baumal suggested techniques to improve self-awareness among medical students through direct (small group discussions) and indirect (teaching clinical skills) approaches.[9] However, the indirect approaches were thought to be more feasible. Novack et al. suggested that students should learn to address their physical and emotional needs and pursue activities that increase their self-awareness and personal growth.[10] Saunders et al. conclude that students could achieve self-awareness by engaging in self-care and gaining exposure to mind-body medicine in medical school.[11] Therefore, we feel that training a medical student on self-awareness is foundational for their development as compassionate and effective healthcare professionals. By doing this, we might be able to make them recognize signs of burnout, regulate stress, seek help or seek feedback where required and maintain their mental health. Therefore, we advocate including the self-awareness module in the medical curriculum. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.